An Anti-Development Manifesto

Every so often I read a ringing defense of anti-housing, anti-development politics.  Someone on my new urbanist listserv recommended an article by Lynn Ellsworth, a homeowner in one of New York’s rich neighborhoods who has devoted her life to (as she sees it) fighting Big Real Estate and (as I see it) fighting to prevent new housing from being built.

Next City ran an excerpt from her new book that makes a variety of questionable statements about New York, many of which I think are relevant to other cities.  In particular:

1.  The “Historic City” assumption: that a large city is a museum for old buildings.

Ellsworth writes: “During the past 30 years, residents of successful historic cities such as New York have lived through escalating battles over demolition of old buildings and over the scale and design of new towers in their historic core neighborhoods.”

The “successful historic city” language implies that New York is a historic, low-rise city just like Savannah or Charleston. There are many such places in the United States, places where much of the building stock is small 18^th– and 19^th-century buildings. 

But New York is not just Savannah with brownstones: part of what makes New York special is that it is the nation’s financial capital and has lots of very tall buildings built over the last century, such as the Empire State Building and the oft-criticized supertalls. In much of Manhattan, a twenty-story building (like the one I live in) is simply part of the vernacular, rather than an aberration.  If you don’t like tall buildings, there are plenty of places outside New York to live. 

Ellsworth writes that opponents of development are “lovers of New York’s uniqueness”.  But there is nothing unique about a horizontal city with nothing taller than a few stories; most American smaller cities are like this.

2. The “Real Estate Runs Everything” Myth

Ellsworth writes that “residents mostly lose these battles [over development because the real estate industry] delivers the battle’s coup de grace by uttering the magic phrase ‘affordable housing.’ At the sound of that phrase, all remaining waffling politicians miraculously fold.”

If real estate was so successful at getting politicians to build stuff, one would think that more housing would be built in New York than in the past.  Of course this is not true.  In the 1920s, over 700,000 housing units were built in New York City, or 70,000 per year.  In the 2000s, fewer than 250,000 housing units were built.

If you compare New York City to other cities, again it seems clear that housing is a pariah land use.  Census data shows that 243,749 housing units were built in New York City in the 2010s, or roughly 27 per 1000 residents.  In Dallas, just over 85,000 housing units were built during this period- or over 60 per 1000 residents. In Houston, just over 160,000 housing units were built- or about 70 per 1000 residents.  Big Real Estate might be pretty good at getting office towers built, but for housing…not so much.

Here, New York is not unique at all: New York’s suburbs allow even less housing than New York.. In Suffolk County where I work, just over 17,000 housing units were built during the 2010s, or about 11 per 1000 residents. To put it another way: Suffolk County has about the same number of people as Dallas, and yet allowed one-fifth as many housing units. Similarly, California cities are often pretty stingy about housing construction: in San Francisco, just over 26,000 housing units were built in the 2010s, or about 30 per 1000. In suburban San Mateo County, about half that many housing units (just over 14,000) were built, creating a Long Island-like construction rate.

3.  The “We Only Hate Supertalls” hint

Ellsworth writes: “The real estate army demands the right to build a new city of bristling towers of immense height… I call their towerization vision ‘hyper-density’.” She adds that “Residents in New York City favoring a human-scaled version of development rarely reject new construction.  Instead, they seek a human-scaled, incremental build-out of the city, inspired by the grate examples of the vast, dense, four-to-eight story historic neighborhoods that they have seen in Paris, Barcelona .. . and in their own historic neighborhoods.”

The implication of this sentence is that neighborhood activists only have a problem with 100-story supertalls for the rich.  But in fact, NIMBYS are quite willing to fight low-rise construction.  For example, in the east Bronx a city council member lost her seat because she was willing to allow an eight-story building in her district.  And in California, statewide legislation was necessary to prevent local governments from stopping accessory dwelling units.

4. The “Nobody Wants Anything But What I Like” Falsehood

Ellsworth writes: “Nobody wants to be packed in like sardines, and at the same time, nobody wants to live in the grassy, car-dependent suburbs.”

I think Ellsworth is trying to say that restrictive zoning and historic preservation just give the people what they want,  because a mythical “everyone” wants to live just like she does. I’m not sure what Ellsworth means by being “packed in like sardines”- but since she writes that her allies are “inspired by.. four-to-eight story historic neighborhoods” I guess she thinks that anything taller qualifies.

Obviously, many New Yorkers want to live in buildings with over eight stories (as I do), so if that is what she means she is dead wrong. And of course, millions of people want to live in the suburbs.  

More importantly, even people who are not in love with these environments choose them over being priced out of their region, or over being homeless. So Ellsworth’s statement appears to be a bit detached from factual reality.